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| Sunday, 21 July 2002 |
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UK's Straw in Pakistan on last leg of peace tour ISLAMABAD, July 20 (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw arrived in Pakistan on Saturday under pressure to lean on Islamabad to stop Islamic militants attacking Indian targets in the disputed Kashmir region. He was due to hold talks with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Inam-ul-Haq, but it was not immediately clear whether he would meet President Pervez Musharraf. On his third visit to the region this year, Straw was told by India in New Delhi on Friday that it had ruled out any further concessions to ease tensions with Pakistan until it destroyed the bases of anti-Indian Islamic militants. Straw's arrival has been marked by a fresh upsurge in violence between the rival nuclear powers. India's army said on Friday it shot dead five Islamic separatists as they tried to sneak into Kashmir. Suspected militants massacred 28 Hindu slum dwellers a week ago and dozens of soldiers, rebels and civilians have died in clashes since. Days before Straw's last visit in May, Islamic militants killed more than 30 people in a raid on an Indian army camp near Kashmir that edged the nuclear rivals close to war. Straw will be followed this month by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his latest visit to the subcontinent. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training Islamic militants and sending them into the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, the mainly Hindu country's only Muslim majority state. Islamabad denies the charge and has promised to stop rebels slipping across the border. The neighbours have mobilised a million men along their frontier, raising fears of war, since a December attack on India's parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistani-based Kashmiri separatists. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence over Kashmir, a fertile landlocked area about the size of Great Britain wedged high in the Himalayas between Afghanistan, China, India and Pakistan. India controls almost half of Kashmir, Pakistan a third and China the rest. |
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